A Point of Honour. By the author of "The Morals
of Mayfair," &c. _ Two vols. (Hurst and Blackett).—This novel is, we think, likely to increase the reputation which its author has already acquired. The story is exceedingly simple, being merely that of a girl who is engaged to a young squire, and is deserted by him when he finds out that she is the daughter of a felon. After a long time she is consoled, and marries the vicar ; while the squire, who has gone rather to the bad in the interim, is entrapped into marriage by a handsome adventuress. The number of the actors is in strict proportion to the simplicity of the piece, the heroine and her two lovers being, in fact, the only three characters in the book. They are, however, very well drawn. Still, we can scarcely call them quite original, for they appear to us to bear a strong resemblance to three of the leading characters in Vanity Fair. In tenderness of nature and want of intellectual power Jane Grand is very like Amelia Osborne ; and Gifford Mohun, the young squire, is just what George would have become if he had not been killed at Waterloo. The resemblance between Mr. Follett, the vicar, and William Dobbin, is certainly less striking; but it is quite perceptible enough to warrant us in regarding it as contributing to the general similarity. The book, in fact, appears to us to be a study after Thackeray—inferior to the original in power, but superior in softness of effect. Matty Fergusson, the handsome adventuress, though a mere sketch, is a very good one ; and there is one touch of nature—when she writes to her mother for some money, on the plea that "in a village there may be charity sermons and all sorts of e.rpenses that she knows nothing about" —which strikes us as peculiarly charming. The book is remarkably well written throughout, and appears to us to be, in all the essentials of a good novel, decidedly superior either to "Creeds" or "The Morals of Mayfair."
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